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An anonymous reader writes "Australia's Federal Government computer emergency response team and other spy agencies are teaming up to create a cyberspooks unit to counter threats from other countries, the nation's chief lawmaker said last night. In a speech referencing Stuxnet and GhostNet, Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the unit would protect sensitive Australian Government and business information from espionage by the nation's foes. Recently new powers were handed to spymasters to deal with the enhanced security threat that the Greens party said were 'excessive.'"

Recently new powers were handed spymasters to deal with the enhanced security threat that the Greens party said were 'excessive.'"

Because when the Greens party says an enhanced security threat is excessive, you know the new powers won't be able to deal with it unless we hand them spymasters!

(Is a apymaster kinda like a viewmaster, you know, those old stereoscope-wheel gadgets?)

I was handed a new spymaster; it's much better than my old one and I am now comfortable in knowing that I am a new power. My old spymaster only took 35mm film -- with this new one I can gaze into a fictional world with such clarity and definition that you'd think it was real.

I should also note that recently I've taken up the habit of wearing my panties and bra on the outside of my clothing, so my "new power" status is unsurprising even though I am a male. I also agree with the Greens that the enhanced security threat are excessive.

Ya know our Republicans won't be able to stand for being outdone by the Aussies in developing methods to control the flow of information over the Internet...

Langley, Virginia,
October 23, 2013.
Office of the newly formed American Cyberwarfare Unit.

Spymaster: Well gentlemen, to help in the formation of this new unit, we've asked some of our allies to share their knowledge.
/ points to heavy set man in shadows.Spymaster: Special Agent Bruce of Orstralya.
/ man in wearing a blue singlet, acrubra hat and blue jeans walks into the light, in his right hand he's holding a can of beer.Agent Bruce: G'day Yanks, yer government has asked me here to talk about ya new

So that would be a cyberdefence unit, not a cyberwarfare unit or in this case as clearly delineated a cybersecurity unit. Whereas other country have been hyping attack, clearly the message was one of defence and providing computer security related expertise and investigation resources to state based police forces.

By definition that would make the Australia computer security team opposition to the US security team who wish to exploit security gaps to attack other countries rather than just being focused o

I've complained about that image before. But I got cut down: everyone just told me I was being overly sensitive.

But seriously. Other countries don't seem to get that treatment. The image is ludicrously stereotyped. And frankly, to an Australian, it seems a rather bizarre choice: yes the Akubra is an iconic piece of Australiana associated with those living on the land and our pioneer forebears, but it's not the ~first~ (or second or even tenth) thing that springs to mind if you're going to pick a stereotyped

Their main role will be to have sockpuppets on all the major news and social networking sites. When a big Rugby\Cricket match is coming up between Australia and England, Australia and New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, Australia and Wales...... they can spam the sites talking us up.

Unfortunately, these hysterical schoolgirls are jumping up on chairs and obtaining new surveillance powers...

While political entities are not free of common human foibles, it is generally safer to view them as actors value-rationally emulating the set of outputs that is most likely to get them what they want, rather than assume that their outputs actually correlate with their internal states...

Take advantage of Australia's uniquely malevolent fauna and boost domestic IT manufacturing by mandating that the bit-buckets into which all routers and security appliances drop potentially malicious packets be filled with saltwater crocodiles. All patched but unused ethernet drops are to be protected by nests of poisonous spiders.

Re uniquely malevolent fauna - ASIO did like Australia gardening guru and television and radio presenter Peter Cundall.
His ideas on racial equality, education for everyone, an end to poverty, an end to war and apartheid protests got ASIO very interested.
As 'friends' they sat in on his meetings about organic gardening and took lots of notes.
Legal reforms might have exposed some of this in the 1990's, but I guess they want their powers back. Expect many more local sneak and peek options and strange comput

Looks like the framework is being pout place to make sure we all remain loyal to the Australian government (and the financial interests it serves), or else.

If the reader thinks we are really under threat from terrorists look up "false flag operations". Do these people sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for terrorists give them the chance to introduce this type of legislation?

What is it with you Americans with your dropping of the word 'to' in sentences... "Write your congressman" should really be "write TO your congressman", "Recently new powers were handed spymasters", should be "Recently new powers were handed TO spymasters"

and when you lot say "you could care less"; it's completely wrong... just parse the sentence folks... it should really be "you couldn't care less" as in you already care very little about something and it isn't possible to care any less...

Be kind to folk from the US. Their dialect of English broke away from the mainstream a long time ago, and they have kept many forms and regional linguistic quirks from the time of their first settlement by English-speaking people. We in the south (AU/NZ) have kept closer to conventional English, despite colourful usage and NZ vowel shifts...

This group will play a valuable role in ensuring that Australians get all the censorship they could ever want. May not be setup with that intention, but it's difficult to imagine the Australian government doing something that is entirely unrelated to censorship.

TL;DW version: no country is going to waste time developing attacks and trying to coordinate with physical attacks when they can be disarmed by Microsoft releasing a patch. Besides, if you want something DoS'd, it's much easier to just blow it up; that way the admins can't just reboot or restore the damn thing and have it up again within minutes. Most importantly, even if you've managed to cripple a country's networks -- includi

Well of course cyberwar would be accompanied by brutal, physical meatspacewar. The two would go hand-in-hand. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss cyberwarfare when basically all of our modern systems and infrastructure depend on computers and the Internet.

There's a quite a number of countries that have been practising and executing cyberwarfare for years. They just deny that they do it.